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==Prisons== | ==Prisons== | ||
The movement to abolish prisons is small and special in some respects. It is special in the sense that its object, the very institution of the prison, is not evidently unjust. This distinguishes it from slavery. Slaves were innocent humans who were refused humane treatment, but prisoners are more or less dangerous people who committed crimes, and who are being accorded a punishment that in some ways is supposed to even help them | Prisons originated as a rather benevolent alternative to the cruel corporal (and capital) punishments of earlier times. This - and the fact that sentenced criminals are morally distinct from innocent victims of slave-hunters - makes it hard to portray the prison as inherently bad, unjust or evil. That may explain the fact that only very few people seem to be determined to abolish prisons immediately, wholly, and once and for all. What is generally referred to as "the prison abolition movement" consists of initiatives that - in their overwhelming majority - are highly critical of the effects of incarceration, but that limit their demands to stopping the expansion of the prison system (e.g. by means of a moratorium on prison construction) or to the step-by-step reduction of the prison system and to replace prisons with more humane and effective systems (reductionism). While reductionism can be seen as a kind of gradualism with the long-term perspective of abolition, the more conventional sectors of the prison reform movement are not aiming at overcoming the prison system as such, but rather at the improvement of prison conditions. | ||
reduce the The movement to abolish prisons is small and special in some respects. It is special in the sense that its object, the very institution of the prison, is not evidently unjust. This distinguishes it from slavery. Slaves were innocent humans who were refused humane treatment, but prisoners are more or less dangerous people who committed crimes, and who are being accorded a punishment that in some ways is supposed to even help them | |||
to cope with everyday life in society. | to cope with everyday life in society. | ||